Till It All Collides
by ilarual
Summary: Having lost all memory of the battle against Dark Kingdom, the senshi go about their lives as ordinary girls. Well… almost ordinary. Usagi is troubled by the gaps in her memory and repeated encounters with an infuriating boy. Meanwhile Minako rises to stardom, and her fame attracts some unwanted attention, which quickly escalates into trouble no ordinary girl could solve.


**Author's Notes-** This is "officially" set in the world of the 90's anime, after the conclusion of the first series, in the same sort of time frame as Sailor Moon R (and completely ignoring absolutely everything that happened in the R series). It does draw a little bit on the manga and PGSM (emphasis on "a little bit" since my familiarity with both those mediums is fairly minimal). I'm not sure how long it's going to be, but I know the plot and what key themes I wanna deal with, so just bear with me as I go, yeah?

I will deeply appreciate any feedback you have the inclination and/or time to leave me!

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><p><strong>I. Prologue<strong>

Although the sun was shining brightly there was a chill in the air, a forewarning of winter that had the citizens of Tokyo tugging their jackets a little closer. One young girl in the Juuban district, however, seemed entirely impervious to the cold. Her long hair streamed behind her in twin pigtails, gleaming metal-bright gold in the autumn sunlight as she all but danced down the crowded street.

Tsukino Usagi was, to all appearances, a very ordinary girl. Fifteen years old and in her final term before taking her high school entrance exams, she enjoyed manga and videogames more than studying. Her grades were unremarkable in either direction in most subjects, excepting English and mathematics, two subjects in which she earned uniformly abysmal marks. She swooned over handsome boys (and the occasional pretty girl), and those who knew her would say that she had never met a stranger in her life. Overall, she seemed to be just another schoolgirl like so many others around her.

However, Usagi had a secret: she was missing a significant chunk of her memories.

Six months ago she had woken up with no recollection of the previous five weeks. She had gone downstairs thinking it was late February only to discover that it was actually April, and much to her dismay, her grades had gotten worse during the missing weeks.

The wise thing, perhaps, would have been to tell her parents about her loss of memory, which was shocking even by her standards of forgetfulness. She was sure, however, that if her mother and father found out, they would make her go to all kinds of doctors to find out what was wrong with her, and she definitely didn't want to do that! Besides, something in her heart whispered that she shouldn't tell just anybody about it. She couldn't explain why she felt that way, she just did. And so she had begun her own private quest to find out the cause by herself.

Usagi had tried to read as much as she could about amnesia since then. Although she didn't understand a lot of what she read, she had gotten enough out of it to realize that there was no apparent cause for her missing memories. She had determinedly questioned her friend Osaka Naru— the only person with whom she had shared her strange secret— about her actions during the time in question, and she therefore knew that she could rule out head injuries. Although she was naturally clumsy, she hadn't been involved in any accidents. Naru also insisted that she hadn't been sick during the days leading up to the end of the blank weeks, so it couldn't be the result of a high fever.

It was as though more than a month of her life had simply been washed clean from her mind.

The only thing that had been different from usual, according to Naru, was that Usagi had been more air-headed than usual, and towards the end of the missing five weeks, she had seemed a little melancholy.

"_Why don't you ask Mizuno-san or Kino-san?" Naru had suggested the last time Usagi had questioned her._

"_The genius girl from Class 5 and that super-strong transfer student?" Usagi had asked, baffled. "Why?"_

_Naru shrugged. "You seemed to be becoming friends with them until you lost your memories. Especially the last couple weeks— you spent much more time with them than with me, I'm sure_ they'd _be able to help you better than I can." _

Usagi hoped it was only her imagination that Naru sounded a little bitter about that.

She had tried to talk to Kino Makoto after that, but the tall girl had given no indication that she even knew who Usagi was, so perhaps Naru had been wrong about a supposed friendship between them. Mizuno Ami, for her part, was so busy taking night school classes that Usagi hadn't even had the opportunity to approach her yet.

But the mystery of her missing memories was not on Usagi's mind on this particular autumn afternoon. No, today she was just eager to get to the arcade, because a new driving game was supposed to be installed this morning, and she was eager to give it a try. Maybe if she was lucky, Motoki-kun would show her how to play.

With a happy giggle at this thought, Usagi waltzed through the doors of the arcade, abandoning the bright afternoon sunlight for the neon tube glow of the game center's interior.

Immediately she caught sight of Motoki behind the counter, leaning forward on his elbows and chatting with someone obscured from her view by the old Sailor V game. Deciding to wait to speak to him until the other customer had moved on, Usagi approached the pin-board to the left of the counter to look at the new flyers that had been put up.

One particularly large poster immediately caught her eye. In big gold and red lettering, it proclaimed that the latest pop sensation, MiNA, was returning to Japan after a lengthy overseas tour. Usagi clapped her hands excitedly when she saw that the teen idol was going to perform a series of concerts in Tokyo.

"I wish I could be a star like MiNA," Usagi sighed with stars in her eyes. "She's so glamorous and beautiful!"

"You know, you kind of look like her, Tsukino-san," Motoki's voice issued unexpectedly from right beside her.

Usagi jumped backwards in surprise, tripped over her own feet, and collided painfully with the person Motoki had been talking to, sending both of them crashing to the tile floor.

"Owwwww," Usagi moaned, her eyes welling up as she took stock of her latest collection of bruises. Peering up at Motoki's concerned face, she pouted. "Furu-chan, why did you scare me like that?!"

"I'm sorry, Tsukino-san," he replied remorsefully. "I didn't realize you didn't know I was there! Are you alright?"

Usagi nodded, tears drying as fast as they had come, and she smiled at this display of concern by her long-time crush.

"I'm also fine, thanks for asking," a male voice said dryly from behind her. "Would you mind maybe getting off me so I can stand up? Your hair's in my face."

She realized abruptly that she was indeed still half-lying on the stranger she had bumped into. She slid off his chest and squirmed around to see his face… and her breath caught in her throat. He was _beautiful_, with messy night-dark hair and eyes of the most incredible pacific blue, but it wasn't his handsome face that registered most with Usagi. No, it was the abrupt shock of recognition that ran down to her very bones when she saw him, the split-second that she was _absolutely certain_ that she knew this boy, that made the deepest impression.

The feeling only lasted a moment, but it left an impact, and she couldn't do more than gape at the boy for several seconds.

"Not very graceful, are you, Dumpling-head?" he remarked, and just like that all the magic vanished from the air.

She glared at him. "Well it's really your fault for standing so close to me in the first place! Who taught you sneak up on unsuspecting girls like that, anyway?"

He ignored this statement, which Usagi was about to take as further proof of his rudeness when he got to his feet and offered her his hand to help her up with a small grin tugging at his lips. She decided that maybe being knocked on his back by a complete stranger justified some annoyance on his part, and she ought to forgive him.

Mostly.

"I can get up by myself," she said primly as she clambered to her feet with as much grace as she could muster. She brushed the dust from her skirt and shook out the newly-formed wrinkles as best she could. "Who are you, anyway?"

"I thought you two knew each other?" Motoki interjected, looking between the two with a confused expression on his face.

The stranger shook his head. "I don't think so. I'd remember someone like her," he said. Though his tone was firm, Usagi thought his eyes looked less confident.

"Huh. Could've sworn I've seen you together," Motoki said, scratching his head in bafflement. "Well, Mamoru-kun, this is Tsukino Usagi. Tsukino-san, this is my friend Chiba Mamoru. He goes to the same high school I did before I started at the university."

"Tsukino-san." Mamoru said the name as though he were trying it out, and obviously found it little to his liking, because he wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "Nope, Dumpling-head suits you better."

Usagi huffed, crossing her arms. What was this guy's problem? "Don't mock my hairstyle!" she demanded.

He held up his hands palms outward in a placating gesture. "I'm not mocking you," he insisted.

She eyed him suspiciously, but chose to take him at his word, and nodded decisively, offering him a hesitant smile which he returned slightly.

"Well, Furu-chan," he said, turning back to his friend, "I gotta get going. It was good to see you."

"You too," Motoki said, his usual easy grin returning to his face as the sparks stopped flying.

Mamoru turned and strode from the arcade, pausing in the doorway to glance back. "See ya, Dumpling-head," he called to her with a wry grin and a hand raised in farewell.

Usagi half-returned his wave, feeling a little shell-shocked by the whole encounter.

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><p>Around the corner, Chiba Mamoru leaned heavily against the side of the building, staring unseeingly at the crowds of people hurrying by. He wore a somewhat astonished expression on his face.<p>

"_Who_ was _that?_"


End file.
